


I could live a thousand lives and never forget those I left behind

by ThatOneGirlBehindYou



Series: Daemons AU [3]
Category: Hunger Games (2012), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canonical Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-07-09
Packaged: 2017-12-18 05:32:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/876178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatOneGirlBehindYou/pseuds/ThatOneGirlBehindYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to "They say it gets easier (it doesn´t)", centers on the Mockingjay War</p><p> </p><p>It´s only the memories of the fallen that keep her up and fighting back</p>
            </blockquote>





	I could live a thousand lives and never forget those I left behind

**Author's Note:**

> The Hunger Games saga belongs to Suzanne Collins, and His Dark Materials belongs to Phillip Pullman.
> 
> Daemons´ names and forms are listed in the series summary.

Sometimes she wonders how they ended up here.

Then she remembers the crying, hungry little girl, and it brings her strength to keep on fighting.

\--

They have been in 13 for approximately twenty minutes when she wants to break someone´s nose for the first time.

"No." She says instead, and endures the resigned stares with an impassive expression. Plutarch rubs his hands together.

"It´s not... Severing. We´d never do something like that. Separation is actually common protocol for the higher ranks here, so that their daemons can´t be used against them in case they are captured, ask anyone."

"No. How am I going to be of any help to the rebellion running around without a daemon?"

"You´re hardly any help to the rebellion at all, sweetheart." Haymitch intervenes. Promethea lies wrapped around his neck, and Katniss can´t help but to wonder if they have done it too.

"You won´t be running around without a daemon." Plutarch tries to regain control over the conversation, but Katniss has eyes for her tutor alone.

"What´s wrong with Lykaios?" She asks, frowning. There´s _nothing_ wrong with him.

"A wolf _is_ a good daemon for a leader. You keep your pack together and safe. But you´re not a leader anymore. You´re much more than that."

"Well I can´t help what he is, can I?" She asks dryly. She expects Lykaios to snarl and show teeth. She _wants_ him to. To show them they still have a little fighting spirit in themselves. But he doesn´t; he keeps silent, flattens his ears to his skull and leans into her side. She wants to kill them all for that alone.

"Exactly, you can´t. But it´s not uncommon for daemons to change after a trauma, and what happened to you..."

"But he didn´t change."

Plutarch sighs again.

"That´s what the separation will help with. We´ll make everyone think he changed." He turns to his assistant, and she leaves only to reappear with someone shortly after.

She´s a tiny speck of a woman, with short, dark-blonde hair and big brown and emotionless eyes.

"This is Frei." He says, but Katniss knows she´s not supposed to remember that. She´s not important. What´s important is the black and white bird daemon perched on her scrawny shoulder. "And this is Makesh."

Katniss feels a boost of respect for this girl, because surviving under the Capitol´s rule with a Mockingjay daemon is an admirable feat. And then she understands what they intend to do.

She walks out the room without a look back.

\--

No one has seen Presindent Coin´s daemon. At first Katniss wondered, but after her meeting with Plutarch and Frei she stopped caring. He probably spends his days as far from her as he can, she knows she would if she could.

She starts caring after a particular meeting when she´s leaving the room along with everyone else. She looks back, and the woman´s whispering something to her wrist. Katniss catches a flash of something bright green and thorny wrapped like a bracelet under the sleeve of her coat, and she makes her decision right then.

She knows better than to fully trust a snake.

\--

When Peeta gives his first interview and asks for both sides to stop, she can barely handle it.

He´s still trying to protect her.

It breaks more than just her heart, but they finally agree.

The next morning they´re taken to a barren land, consequence of the radioactive waste. Katniss walks it from side to side, and it hurts, but every step she takes is a person she could save and each of Lykaios´ pained howls are the ones she couldn´t.

\--

Everything feels a bit different after the separation. Not good. Not bad. Just different.

Bendis stiffens whenever Lykaios walks past her, like trying not to flinch, and that´s more than most of other 12 native do.

The first night she makes her way to her cubicle, her mother stares. Prim stares. Then Valerian and Panax both fall over Lykaios. Panax shakes a little and takes the form of a smaller wolf to nuzzle him.

She lets herself fall in their arms for the rest of the night, and it feels like home.

\--

The first warning comes shortly after.

Her prep team seems too busy cowering from her to notice her condition, until she reaches for Venia.

The woman´s eyes widen a fraction, but they fill with tears and warmth in just a second.

Lykaios pushes her hare daemon to help him get to his feet, and when he walks past him to pick up Flavius´ lap dog by the scruff of her neck he feels a tug on the fur of his paw. He finds Octavia´s shiny mouse clinging to his leg for dear life, and he lies down to let him climb to his back.

When he walks out with the three daemons, the dog in his mouth the mouse on his back and the hare at his side, Bendis huffs angrily. Lykaios snarls and walks past her without sparing her a single look.

\--

The Mockingjay suit has specially padded shoulders and forearms, so that Makesh (who she must call Lykaios if she adresses him during the filming.) can perch on her without being in direct contact.

She knows it won´t work and it doesn´t, but it´s not as she had expected. In fact, the first time the claws bite into her padded forearm she barely feels anything. Not a thought. Not a feeling. Nothing at all.

 _`It´s not severing, we´d never do something like that.´_ Plutarch had said, but now she thinks he might have left a `to you at least´ out.

She doesn´t get much time to dwell on Frei´s and Makesh´s condition, though, before Haymitch comes and brings all of Plutarch´s hopes crashing down.

\--

They go to 8.

Lykaios bites down on her hand before she grabs the ladder. She smiles because it´s not a threat; It´s a caress that´s as dry and graceless as she is.

She tries to keep count of how many wounded ask her about `Lykaios´, perched on her shoulder or fluttering behind her, but she soon loses track of it. She falls in love with the broken rebels a hundred times, under the watching eyes of Paylor and her lion daemon.

When she runs head-first into the bombing Makesh doesn´t say a thing, only flies uselessly after her, and she feels like a puppet more than she ever did before. Even as she acts on her own, she´s not whole.

Or at least she thinks so, until she reaches the burning hospital and turns to face the cameras. When Cressida gives her the opening for her speech, she feels a growl in her chest and she _knows_ it´s Lykaios. The real one.

She´s a wolf, and Snow just attacked her pack.

\--

She´s a bit dizzy the next few days, but at least her daemon is with her.

They had forgotten how much they liked Finnick and Helmi.

\--

Pollux has no daemon. It takes her a while to get comfortable around him; she remembers the older kids at school whispering stories about people getting their daemon cut off and becoming monsters. Emotionless and inhuman.

But when she makes the mockingjays sing he cries, and his joy is so beautiful she quickly forgets about it.

\--

When Peeta gives them the warning about the attack, they rip Cassia from him. They almost miss it, with the camera falling on its side and everything, but Katniss sees a hand crushing her before the transmission stops. She wants to throw up, and for a second the rage that rises inside her overpowers the fear of the oncoming threat.

In the end, it´s Prim´s arrival to the bunker what calms her. They fix a bed for her stupid at and huddle together under the blankets.

"I think they´re going to train me to be a doctor." Prim says, and Katniss feels as though she´s been hit on the head with a hammer. Prim has a future to look forward to now. She wants to say something, but she can´t get a word past her dry throat. Luckily, her daemon speaks for the two of them when he tackles Panax to the ground and licks his face.

Then Prim gives her the second shock.

"Do you want to know a secret?" She asks, watching the daemons playing around their limited space.

"I don´t know. Do I?"

"Panax settled."

Katniss freezes again, this time in fear because when did her little sister grow up?

"When?" She croaks out. Prim fidgets at her side.

"When I started with the doctor training." She calls Panax to her side, and Katniss studies her sister´s daemon.

He´s a small white fox with a rounded muzzle and chubby legs, and as he stands next to Lykaios Katniss remembers she always thought he´d choose a bird form of some sort, like Valerian, but he didn´t. A fox was certainly not a wolf, and it would never be, but the intent was clear. A fox was adaptable and strong, not as aggressive, but probably smarter.

Katniss remembers Cinna, so brave and quiet, a genius and most of all one of the few people she´d allowed herself to trust completely. She remembers Mel, smiling a toothy grin as she revealed their plan for her burning costume. She remembers her nuzzling Lykaios one last time before the Peacekeepers fell on her human, and how she kept still as a statue, her head proudly raised even as they dragged him away.

Her eyes burn and she blinks back the tears.

"He´s perfect, Prim. You´re both perfect."

Prim lets out a sigh of relief and Katniss hugs her tightly because she might be a woman now, but she´ll always be her little sister.

\--

She spends more time with Finnick. His silence is tranquilizing, his knots are distracting, and his words are comforting, even when they speak of torture and pain, because they´re sincere.

He keeps no secrets from her. He understands.

\--

They try to get her to film another prop, but she breaks down. She thinks of the Peacekeepers holding Peeta´s soul away from him and she can´t get the words past her lips. Finnick breaks with her and the others have no option than to give in.

They´ll bring the tributes back.

\--

She hasn´t been on good terms with Haymitch in a while, but everything´s forgotten when the news reach them that the hovercraft has landed.

Annie is on Finnick in a second, and when they manage to let go of each other, she lifts Helmi from the ground and kisses her on the nose, just as a seagull daemon nests in Finnick´s tanned arms, and it´s so natural and they look so comfortable that no one questions it.

Cassia is awake before her human, and Lykaios and Promethea an´t get to her fast enough. She wraps a tiny hand around Katnisss´ offered finger, and Katniss feels something odd, not just in the touch, but in the way Cassia´s big golden eyes are drowned in sorrow.

Peeta stirs to consciousness, and when she moves to greet him, the daemon grips harder.

"Katniss, he..."

That´s all she manages to hear before Peeta´s hands wrap around her neck.

\--

She can´t do it.

Peeta´s mind is lost, she´s sure of it, after he´s sedated with a special substance and Cassia explains the particular method of torture he was subjected to.

Lykaios hasn´t looked at anyone in the eye in days, until they find Gale and Beetee, crafting their horrible traps.

"I guess there isn´t a rule book about what might be unacceptable to do to another human being." She says, and takes Gale´s glare unmoving. Bendis hisses at her, and Lykaios seems to come back to life.

He shoves Gale´s daemon on her back and snaps a bite an inch short of her face, which she retaliates with a scratch to his side.

Bogg´s huge mastiff daemon tears them from each other, and Katniss walks away without a look back. Inside, she´s breaking just as her life does around her.

\--

When Gale kisses her yet again in two, Lykaios and Bendis are shamelessly snarling at each other, their fur all fluffed up, but she doesn´t care. About them, about him, about the kiss. She feels detached, like she´s kissing someone else.

Gale is not the boy she knew anymore.

They break the Nut, and she leaves her daemon at the safety of the base.

Makesh perches mutely on her shoulder and does nothing as she panics. Haymitch´s the one that calms her, just in time for Boggs to get her to the train station. She has another star appearance to make.

When she gets shot, she´s sure she can hear her daemon howling. She also has the worrying thought that she somehow feels relieved.

\--

At first glance, Johanna is still Johanna, but as she sits down on her bed and leeches on her morphlin, her daemon climbs after her and she knows it´s all a facade.

She remembers when he was a wolverine, back at the Arena. Now he´s a cat, big and sharp-faced and striped like a tiger. But a cat still. Lykaios paws him playfully and he gives the paw a lazy bite and a scratch. It makes her smile, at least she hasn´t lost her temper.

She should be surprised that they stage Annie and Finnick´s wedding to be a prop, but she isn´t.

She´s just happy, when Finnick comes t their hospital room smiling so wide it has to hurt, and can´t even form words until Johanna hits him on the back of the head, wearing an annoyed, fond smile.

\--

After they escape from Peeta´s compartment, Lykaios tells her about Cassia.

"She´s scared, Katniss. She says most of the time he won´t even look at her. At first she feared they had been severed, but she still feels him, and she´s really scared for him."

"I am too. Only I´m scared _of_ him." She answers, but she adds out of consideration for Cassia. "You should go and visit her. He doesn´t seem to have anything against you."

"Trackerjacker venom doesn´t affect daemons. Every memory Cassia has of me is still good and untainted."

She feels an absurd surge of jealously towards her daemon.

\--

She misses Finnick, nice, funny Finnick and his gentle Helmi, but she has to admit Johanna and Totec are what they need right now, despite their insults and bites. They are nothing like Madge and her squirrel daemon, but Katniss looks at her and sees a friend.

\--

They barely make it into the squad in time. She´s at the Block, and she wants to shoot the gas tank, but her leader orders her to lay low. Makesh (they insisted she trained with him in case there were cameras at the Capitol) glides to the ground and curls into a ball. She thinks of how much she hates it, of how Lykaios would´ve stayed on his feet at lunged at the Peacekeepers, and then she understands what they´re testing her for.

She obeys the order and earns herself a ticket to the Capitol.

When they say goodbye, Tot´s still wet and shivering, and he leans into Lykaios even as Johanna keeps her distance and makes her promise to kill Snow.

Before they leave, Johanna´s grip on her wrist turns painful and Totec bites Lykaios´ paw hard.

She looks like she wants to say something, but Katniss shakes her head. She doesn´t need to hear it. She returns the bruising grip for a second, and then leaves.

Before she does, she looks back briefly and catches the girl sniffing her pine needle cushion again. She smiles sadly and has the briefest thought that she wishes they had met on different circumstances.

\--

It turns out Plutarch was right after all. All of squad 451´s daemons are with their humans at the camp, but none of them ever steps remotely close to the Capitol streets. She wonders how she never noticed when Gale was separated and concludes it must be because she hasn´t spent more than 5 seconds with him before the trip to the Capitol.

Peeta´s a message clear as crystal, and she feels herself being pulled back into the black hole she left 13 to escape. Only he´s different.

He doesn´t hate her. He doesn´t love her. His indifference and lack of trust bite just as hard, but she tries. She tries for the monkey daemon she so hated when she met her the first time.

Peeta isn´t separated, he was apparently judged too unstable to undergo the procedure, but Cassia still strains her bond with him to slip into Katniss´ s tent at night and sleep curled between her and the wolf daemon.

\--

They finally get sent to a real mission, and Lykaios stays at the base with the rest of the group´s daemons, save from Cassia who is well hidden in Peeta´s uniform. She´s got Makesh with her when they start down the street, and he stays there, mute and perched on her shoulder, as Boggs gets blown up and everything goes spiraling down.

He lets go when the black wave reaches its peak, and Katniss is about to go back for him after they drag Peeta into the empty house, but someone closes the door in her face. That´s the last she sees of the daemon, and she has no time to think of what will most likely happen to Frei all the way back in 13.

\--

The mutts are on them, the scent of roses is in her nose and her mouth tastes bitter with vomit.

She wonders if she ever really left the Arena.

Finnick looks into her eyes and she holds the stare for everything she owes him, despite the fear and the smell that has now mixed with that of blood. His memories are beautiful, and she has the guts to end it their way before Snow gets the chance to rip someone else from her.

\--

Even as she´s being led to the hidden basement, she doesn´t know if she trusts Tigris.

"Did Snow ban you from the Games?" She asks, hopeful. "Because I´m going to kill him, you know?"

The disfigured woman stays silent and stares at her, but then there´s movement behind the counter and Katniss looks there. The tiger daemon that comes out is by far the most impressive she´s ever seen. Bigger than he probably ought the right to be, with golden-green eyes and an air of cold, pent up rage. Feral.

She looks again at the woman who has turned into as much of a reflection of her soul as she could, as said soul sits by his human and smiles up at her.

"Oh, we´re looking forward to that." He speaks with a deep, rumbling voice, and something in his eyes eases her worries. She goes in.

She wakes up later that night, but as she recognizes the voices whispering in the dark, she pretends she hasn´t.

"That was funny, what Tigris said. About no one knowing what to do with her." Peeta says.

"Well, we never have." Gale agrees. She stays there frozen, just listening as they argue about who she really loves.

"I wonder how she´ll make up her mind."

"Oh, that I do know." Gale laughs." Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can´t survive without."

Katniss feels her breath get stuck in her throat, and her heart hammering inside her chest. A part of her just can´t believe Gale would think of her like that. That Peeta woudn´t refute him. A third part can´t believe she didn´t realize sooner. All the pressure of the last day, of the deaths she´s caused, of these two boys she doesn´t know how to love falls down on her. Her eyes fill and burn with tears, but when they´re about to spill, it happens. There´s a little, warm bundle slipping up to her chest under the heavy fur she´s using as a blanket.

Cassia grips a lock of her hair in her tiny fist, and Katniss holds her until she falls asleep, as if she were her own daemon.

\--

The commotion outside Snow´s mansion is much too messy for her to remember much.

However, she does remember Gale being dragged away, and knowing that´s the last time they truly ever saw each other.

She remembers the gunshots and the screams and Peeta´s words coming back in ghostly echoes. _Why can´t they stop? Why do they have to kill each other?_

But most of all, she remembers the silver parachutes drifting down to the kids in the barricade. The snowy white fox and the feeling of relief because they hadn´t separated her.

The ducky tail.

The explosion.

\--

She doesn´t know what´s real anymore. Her father sings next to her bed in the hospital-like room. Prim runs in and out and the reminder that she won´t do so ever again comes with a dull pain in her chest.

Coin comes to see her, and that´s when she notices she´s not dreaming anymore, because if there´s something her mind would never conjure up voluntarily, it´s Coin.

"Don´t worry, I saved him for you."

And her life is so close to be over, she´s so close to reaching her last goal, that she feels strangely disconnected.

The third day, Haymitch comes to see her, and holds the door open behind him.

"I figured you´d like to see him." He says. She doesn´t recognize him at first.

The fur has turned white, and there´s a haunted look in his eyes that used to be so fiery, but when he limps to her bed and rests his head on her lap she tangles a hand in his fur instinctively. She´s whole. And she´s empty.

\--

Her mother hasn´t come to see her. Neither have Gale, or Peeta. She doesn´t really want to see any of them.

"You can´t go in, miss" Says the guard at a certain door when some days later she finds herself roaming around the mansion like a restless spirit, following the scent that poisons her dreams.

She stares blankly at the soldiers. She doesn´t know why they´re there. Why they aren´t letting her in. Why don´t they understand. Paylor is her guardian angel and lets her in.

She´s cutting off the steam of a blossom that´s as white as Panax was, as Lykaios is now, when he finds her.

"I wanted to tell you how very sorry I am about your sister." Snow says, and keeps talking even though Katniss is not listening anymore. Or wasn´t, until something get her attention. "I was just about to issue an official surrender when they released those parachutes."

He´s lying. She knows he´s lying.

"There was no reason for me to destroy a pen full of Capitol children. None at all." None, indeed.

Her mind halts and if she could talk at all, the sudden realization would´ve let her speechless. She doesn´t even bat an eyelash when he goes on, talking about Coin and Plutarch, and how it was all staged, because she´s thinking of another responsible.

"I´m afraid we´ve both been played for fools." He says, and he´s right.

She still doesn´t want to believe him, and it must show on her face because Snow´s black snake daemon peeks her head out of his collar, and hisses condescendingly at her.

"Oh, my dear miss Everdeen... I thought we had agreed not to lie to each other."

\--

As agonizing as her days are, she does get a pleasant surprise, and this time the roles are reversed.

Flavius wraps her on a robe with shaky hands, and Venia struggles to hold her smile, but she does, and in the end it´s Octavia´s mouse daemon nibbling on Lykaios´ ears what makes him stand up and follow the humans.

As soon as she walks into the room she feels like she´s been transported back in time. Effie looks up at her from her chair, with her fake hair and her face eyelashes and her over the top dress, and her cockatoo daemon perched on the back of her chair, even though the orange dye has almost faded and he looks more pink than anything.

She looks tired and starved, but she´s alive and that matters more than anything else, because she´s a speck of her past that somehow made it through the fire.

\--

Peeta is the first to vote against the games and Katniss knows the world would´ve destroyed him. He´s just too good, and she isn´t in the least.

"I vote yes... For Prim." She doesn´t, but she tells no one. Haymitch knows anyways; as much as she might hate him -she doesn´t hate him, not really. He´s just easy to hate and much too happy to be hated- they are the same.

"I´m with the Mockingjay."

\--

The bow´s string is tense and she tries to focus on her target, only she´s not sure f which one it is. Both of Panem´s rulers wait before him. The former is on his knees, and the new stands at his side, still and calculating as ever.

Two snakes.

She shoots, and there´s only one.

She´s satisfied with her kill. The past is not dangerous. Future is what can and will most certainly kill you.

\--

It takes her years to come back, and the first days are torture. She wanders the destroyed district ignoring the newcomers and wondering why the world hasn´t ended yet, if there´s nothing that´s worth it anymore. Lykaios rarely speaks and she doesn´t either. They understand each other in silence.

It´s Peeta and Cassia´s return what marks the beginning of their recovery. Maybe that´s what they had been waiting for.

Slowly at first, they start growing back together. Cassia threads her small fingers through Katniss´ new hair, and Peeta holds her still whenever she wakes up screaming and trashing around in the bed. Somehow she doesn´t find it in her to care when or how she let him in there again.

She´s not surprised to notice Lykaios was right all those years ago. Gale with his fire would have destroyed them. Peeta is the dandelion that brings hope for a better life.

"You love me. Real or not real?" He asks one night, supporting his weight on one elbow and watching her intensely. The moonlight is falling straight over his face, and Cassia observes from over his shoulder, expectant.

"Real." Katniss whispers. Lykaios´ head rests over the edge of the bed, and neither he nor her make a move to stop Peeta when he reaches a hand and rests it between the wolf´s ears.

I t feels right.

Safe.

\--

Sometimes she wonders how they ended up here.

Then she remembers the flowery bushes down her window and it brings her strength to go back inside and face the present.


End file.
